Everything is up-to-the-last-minute; all the time.
With us, it seems like everything is pushed up to the last minute. Rush Rush Rush. And it’s a stressful mode to be in all the time - but I think this is the way it is everywhere. For us, this has been the case for the last two months straight because we’ve jumped at time-crunched opportunities. We’ve opted to go for it rather than pass on the opportunities, but it is crazy-making to the extreme.
I love finding videos, like this one showing designer Mendel preparing a gown for the oscars. If you get the chance to watch it, notice how they are sewing, pinning, and cutting fabric off the dress right up to the minute the dress flies out the door for the fitting. And notice it’s because he had only 7 days to create a couture gown for a celebrity for the oscars. Last-minute opportunity that you do not pass up, no matter what is going on in the business otherwise. I’m pretty positive this dress showed up on Celine Dion during her song performance - imagine that.
When you jump at the opportunities, obviously, the other “already planned and happening” projects suffer. We jumped on an opportunity to do an oscar gift bag event, the timeline of which fell exactly on top of our prep for our first trade show. It was total insanity, and my motto became “make it happen”. We made it happen. There are ways I wish I was a little more prepared for the trade show, gosh I wish we could have accomplished a few more things, but we showed up, we got orders, we spread out around the US, we met a lot of people; we accomplished our main goals. And we met the deadlines for the gift bags with some of the most amazing products we’ve created to date.
And the bags have (supposedly) been delivered, so in the next few months we’ll see if all that hard work was worth it. I’m just hoping to get confirmation everything was delivered as promised, so we can at least say these celebrities have our stuff, even if we can’t claim they love it quite yet.
Back to the last minute thing; we’d like to participate in a fashion show for an event in April; which has given us less than a week to get the look book together with our fall fashions. We pulled off a modelling shoot on Saturda; I’m hoping to pull off at least one more and get the package shipped be end-of-day tomorrow. I’d be nowhere if my husband wasn’t a fully-involved partner. He’ll get the pictures in shape and will get all the catalog graphics and design together. I’m responsible for layout, the clothing, content and shipping. And we’re both dreaming of the days when we have more hands to help. Of course, the more hands we get, the more we take on..so I guess it’s a good sign if you’re rushed all the time.
1 comment February 26th, 2007